The distribution of the feature [high] in Shona verbs is a prototypical example of positional neutralisation accompanied by vowel harmony. In languages which exhibit positional neutralisation of vowel contrasts, one or more vowels (generally, the most marked members of the vowel inventory) may occur distinctively in only a small subset of the structural positions available in the language. Outside of these positions, the marked vowels may surface only if they harmonise with a similar vowel in the privileged position. For example, the mid vowels e and o in Shona verbs are contrastive only in root-initial syllables. These vowels may appear in subsequent syllables only when preceded by a mid vowel in root-initial position. A string of height-harmonic Shona vowels is therefore firmly anchored in the root-initial syllable, as shown in (1):

In some languages, syllable weight depends exclusively on vowel length, while in others, coda consonants add weight to syllables. In this paper we assume that syllable weight is reflected in moraic structure, and that weight-bearing coda consonants are the exclusive dependents of a mora, while weightless consonants share a mora with the preceding vowel. We consider whether the durations of vowels and coda consonants reflect the distinction between a segment which occupies its own mora and a segment that shares a mora. We examine three patterns of coda weight, reflected in stress assignment: in Hindi, codas always contribute to syllable weight; in Malayalam, coda consonants are always weightless; and in Levantine Arabic, coda weight is contextually determined, with word-internal codas contributing to syllable weight following a short vowel, but weightless following a long vowel. These phonological patterns translate into different moraic representations of CVC and CVVC syllables across the different languages. We examine the durations of vowels and coda consonants in CV, CVC, CVV and CVVC syllables in Hindi, Malayalam and Levantine Arabic, and find that in all three languages, segments that we represent as mora-sharing are significantly shorter than segments that we represent as occupying an independent mora. The striking differences in durational patterns across the three languages correlate with the different moraic representations proposed on the basis of phonological patterning.

A fundamental observation of phonological theory is that, out of the rich sound signal of speech, a small subset of phonetic properties is contrastive in any given language. Standardly, this observation is captured by excluding the non-distinctive phonetic properties from some levels of representation, yielding an abstract categorical representation of the contrasts among the speech sounds. Universally non-contrastive features have generally been assumed to be unspecified throughout the phonological component; thus, for example, Keating (1984) and Lombardi (1991) have argued against inclusion of particular laryngeal features in phonological representation on the grounds that they are never contrastive. Language-particular non-contrastive features have generally been assumed to be unspecified only in underlying representation and early stages of the derivation (e.g. Kiparsky 1982, Archangeli 1984, 1988, Archangeli & Pulleyblank 1986, 1994, Steriade 1987, Clements 1988). Moreover, since the discovery of extensive language-particular gradient alternations, it has standardly been assumed that a subsequent phonetic component is needed, to fill in gradient and universally non-contrastive properties (e.g. Pierrehumbert 1980, Keating 1990; but see Pierrehumbert 1994 for an attack on this view of the phonetics–phonology interface). This model is schematised in Fig. 1.

This paper deals with the domains of some phonological rules of Baule, a Bia language of the Central Tano group (Stewart 1989) spoken in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa. Like the other languages in this group, Baule has phonological Low and High tones, and a Low tone lowers the register of following High tones – the phenomenon widely referred to as downdrift. But Baule is distinguished from other members of the Central Tano group (and, indeed, from other downdrifting languages that we have studied) in that, within specified domains, sequences of two or more High tones exhibit a rise in pitch over the sequence.

In this paper we show that the occurrence of the rising pattern over High-tone sequences helps to make a clear distinction in Baule between the prosodic word and the morphological word, in line with the results of Selkirk (1980), Nespor & Vogel (1986), Inkelas (1990) and others. We motivate the Baule prosodic word as a phonological constituent whose delimitation is based on the morphological word, but with modifications based on language-particular syntactic, morphological and phonological considerations. Baule prosodic words include, along with simple morphological words that are lexical items in the language, compounds, proper names, noun+adjective and noun+numeral constructions. Other prosodic words are formed by affixing monosyllabic elements (including pronouns, nouns and numerals) to adjacent lexical units.